Chapter Six
S ilence had finally fallen on the castle of King Leodegrance late into night—or I guessed it was morning by now as I trailed through the castle in an embroidered nightgown and the duvet cover that had been on the bed in the room I’d been led into draped over my shoulders.
Before, back in my own time, I used to giggle with my mother at period dramas where everyone would be scandalized if a woman was seen in her nightgown. It had seemed ridiculous at the time, but even standing in the low candlelight of the room had shown me that this thing was far more see-through than whatever they were using on TV.
Hence the duvet cover for modesty.
And why, you may ask, was I wandering through a medieval castle in the middle of the night?
Well, after King Leodegrance—my pseudo-father I mentally corrected—had dropped me off at my room he had spoken about how he wished my mother could see my marriage and how it had been her most fervent wish before her death.
Without thinking, I’d asked what she was like and through misty eyes he’d told me she was the funniest person he had ever met and how she used to snort-laugh at her own jokes whenever she told them.
He’d been halfway through explaining how she’d spent his own mother’s last few years scandalizing her with some of the things she would say when I realized it was almost as if he was describing my mom—not some faceless woman that magic had conjured up—but my actual mother, Adelaide Ramos.
After he’d left I asked one of the maids that was helping me undress if there was a painting of the late queen.
Most of the maids had ignored me, clearly having been instructed never to speak of her, but one had leaned in and whispered that there was a corridor on the far side of the castle that had a painting of her on the wall.
I waited until the bustle of the castle finally died down, too amped up from the day to even try to sleep, and got out of bed. I had snagged the half-burned candle on my bedside table before heading out on my little impromptu excursion into an unfamiliar castle, the candle doing little to soothe my frayed nerves.
“It feels like I’m in a horror movie,” I muttered to myself after jumping for what felt like the thousandth time as I turned down a dark corridor and the weak flame from the candle barely illuminated a foot in front of me, nearly blowing out from the draft that seemed to blow through the entire place. Apparently 6th century insulation left much to be desired.
Hoping that nothing jumped out at me, I turned into what I hoped was the corridor that the maid had spoken of. She told me to look for the blue curtains covering the walls and as soon as my eyes found the frayed edges of them I knew I’d made it.
This hallway was much smaller than any of the others and looked as if it hadn’t been touched in years. Dust hung in the air and my feet disturbed it on the floor, tracking bare footprints as I had to keep myself from inhaling too much of it for fear of coughing up a lung.
In the middle of the hallway was what looked to be a pair of closed curtains with iron hooks on either side. Reaching for them, I gently pulled them aside and tucked them into the hooks so that I could get a better look at what lay behind.
Holding up my candle, I gazed at the painting on the wall. It was of a couple, the man clearly King Leodegrance—though a much younger version of him. He was staring lovingly down at a woman who was sitting in a chair at his hip.
Almost all of the portraits from this time period had been lost to the annals of time—some even thinking that they didn’t exist at all—so I had only ever seen what was painted after this time, but even I knew this pose was unusual. Most of the time, formal portraits would have both subjects looking straight ahead at the artist.
This meant that the pose was requested. Leodegrance wanted everyone to know how much he loved his wife.
My eyes skimmed down from Leodegrance’s expression to the woman he was directing it at and it felt as if someone had punched all of the air out of me.
“Impossible,” I gasped as I looked into the eyes of Adelaide Ramos.
The artist’s style had rounded out her face slightly and she was dressed in a way I’d never seen before, but the sharp intelligence that she always seemed to carry with her like a weapon shone from the painting as if it was actually her staring out at me.
I sat down in front of the painting, uncaring about the dust, the duvet around my shoulders falling at my waist as I stared up at it in awe.
How was it that in every universe and timeline she was gone? How was it possible for someone like her to even exist in two timelines in the first place?
Life is an odd thing, an unfamiliar voice whispered in my ear but the words echoed the same ones my mother had said to me a few days before she passed.
I had been railing against the unfairness of it all in a moment of weakness, asking her how life could do this to us, and she’d taken my hand in her own thin one and gripped it with a strength I didn’t know she still possessed, telling me those words with an almost knowing smile.
Had this been what she’d meant? Had she known something about all of this craziness that I’d found myself in? It couldn’t be. She would have told me. My mother told me everything.
A thready sob caught in my throat as I pressed my hands to my mouth.
“Are you well?”
I jumped, whirling to find none other than King Arthur standing at the end of the corridor holding a lantern that seemed to brighten the entire, dusty space effortlessly compared to my miniscule candle.
I wiped at my face and moved to stand, embarrassed at being caught by someone like him after our last conversation had ended in an argument earlier.
He seemed to be a stubborn, traditional alpha—not unlike some of the men I’d met in my own time—except here in ancient England his words weren’t totally unfounded or unagreed on by the general populace.
I was really regretting my theater degree right about now, wishing I’d chosen to major in history instead of minoring in it —and in art history nonetheless. At least then the thought of a chamber pot wouldn’t terrify me so much as the one in my own bed chamber did.
Arthur’s blue eyed gaze slanted away from me and in the light of his lantern I could see his cheeks flush. “Could you please cover yourself, my lady?”
His words had me glancing down to realize that the duvet was pooled at my feet rather than still covering my body.
Cursing under my breath I yanked it up around my shoulders.
Despite my embarrassment, I couldn’t help but quip: “Have you never seen a woman’s body before, your highness?”
The platitude rolled off of my lips sarcastically and despite the barbs in it, I watched as his lips twitched upwards almost uncontrollably before falling back into a frown. “I can assure you that I am no stranger to the view of a naked woman, but you are a princess and a maiden. Most would consider me uncouth if I gazed upon your body before marriage.”
“I’m no maiden,” I told him before I could stop myself. Was that something I was supposed to tell him? The gods hadn’t stopped me, so I assumed it was fine, but there was no telling what an alpha like him would say to the fact that I wasn’t a virgin anymore.
“Do women in your time not retain their chastity until marriage?” Arthur asked, sounding more curious than anything as he slowly moved to stand by me.
He was still dressed in the same clothes as earlier, though the grand cape he’d worn over his shoulders was gone now and so was the burnished gold crown from his head. It made him seem more human to see his golden-red hair curling messily over his brow.
“Do all men in your time lose theirs before marriage?” I countered his question with one of my own.
This time Arthur’s lips actually pulled up into a smile.
“Not all, but some,” he admitted sheepishly and he turned to look at the painting in front of me.
“My mom,” I told him, gesturing to it.
“Your mother that was made by Merlin’s magic, you mean. I met Queen Adelaide just once before I was crowned king. She was a beautiful woman, though I suppose she must also be a false memory to me now,” he told me airily, as if the woman in the painting shouldn’t mean anything to me because I had been placed in this time by the gods.
“No,” I shook my head aggressively and pointed at her again. “That is my mom. From my time.”
Arthur blinked with surprise, his blue eyes narrowing at the new information. “Are you certain?”
I nodded. “I would recognize her anywhere.”
“What happened to the mother in your future, then? Is she there waiting for you to return?” he asked softly after a few moments of silence, his voice gentler than I had ever heard it.
My chest squeezed as I shook my head no again. “No, she died there too.”
“I am sorry for your loss,” Arthur murmured. “I also lost both of my own mothers as well.”
I knew that. I knew Arthur’s entire story—nearly every iteration of it anyway—not that I could tell him that without being choked out by the powers that be.
But Arthur was moving on now as he turned to me fully. “I am sorry about my behavior earlier, my lady. It is not like me to argue with anyone and I let my emotions get the better of me.”
I gaped at him, shocked that he had been the first to apologize or even apologize at all. “Are kings allowed to apologize?” I asked incredulously.
Arthur huffed a dry laugh. “They do when they are in the wrong, my lady.”
“Gwen,” I corrected. “I don’t like the ‘my lady’ stuff.”
One golden-red brow rose. “Then you will really not like the ‘your highness’ stuff .”
He mimicked the word as if he was committing it to memory.
I gaped at him. “You mean you’re actually going to go through with it? The wedding, I mean?”
“ We are going to go through the wedding, my queen. It does not bode well to disobey the gods. I have never done so before and I will not start now.”
“But we barely know each other!” I managed to stutter out, clasping the duvet around my shoulders more tightly. “We need to get to know each other first!”
“Do omegas in your time not have arranged marriage anymore, Gwen?” he asked, using the nickname I’d given him though it sounded odd coming from his mouth.
“Well, they do…” I trailed off. “But it doesn’t happen often.”
“We can get to know each other after our marriage. Leodegrance seems to wish to hold it before we head back to Camelot in a few days and I am keen to return home as soon as possible as my people shall be readying for their first harvest by now.”
“So soon?” I squeaked, the gravity of the situation suddenly hitting me. When Merlin had been talking about marriage and a pack earlier that had all been… hypothetical in my mind.
Now it was very, very real.
“I don’t want an alpha, remember?” I said, managing to keep my voice light.
“You are not getting just an alpha, Gwen, you are getting a king,” Arthur told me with a finality that scared me. “I want to save my kingdom and if marrying you will get me there then the choice is obvious, is it not?”
“Does it not matter what I want?”
“Do you wish to return to your own time? Perhaps once we have fulfilled the gods wishes they will give you what you want,” Arthur offered though it was clear he didn’t like what he was saying. “Think of it as an arranged union where two parties agree for the betterment of both.”
A contract marriage. It sounded like something out of a mafia romance not the period piece that I had found myself in.
“And what about Merlin saying you need a pack to do it?”
Arthur’s jaw tightened. “What was foretold will be,” he said ominously.
And I didn’t believe him one bit.
“You are so going to get me burned at the stake,” I muttered under my breath, thinking of the iteration of the legend where instead of Arthur accepting a pack he found Guinevere and Lancelot in an embrace and killed them both. Truly the most gruesome version that I was half-afraid we were hurtling towards now.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing,” I said, hurrying around his bulk before turning on my heel to look at him. “So contract marriage, got it, no feelings and no touching. Aye aye, Captain .” I gave him a mock salute that he clearly had no ability to appreciate because he just frowned at the motion.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have a very strange way of speaking?” Arthur asked as he watched me go.
“Speak for yourself, your highness,” I called, continuing to walk backwards, wanting nothing more than to find my way back to my bed, hoping that going would somehow make me wake up from this insane dream I was having.
“Arthur,” he corrected, making me stop in my tracks. “You may call me Arthur, and while this union may be arranged, Guinevere, be under no impression that it will not be a true marriage between you and me. While fate may decree that you will take a pack into your bed, I will have no other than my bonded omega. Know that.”
The ferocity in his words sent an odd shiver down my spine. It wasn’t fear necessarily, but something that collected in my core—almost an anticipation. It was a sensation that I often ignored and suppressed with pills.
I said nothing to him in return, and instead, scurried away from him like the coward I was. My thoughts were stormy as his sweet and spicy scent seemed to chase me down the dark corridors of the castle and back to my room.
It’s just a contract, I told myself later as I curled up on the down mattress and forced myself to go to sleep.
Just a contract—there’s no way I would actually fall in love or be attracted to someone from the past… right?